Friday, July 31, 2015

In its rush to become as disreputable as FIFA, that other grand international sports organization, the International Olympic Committee, has just awarded the Winter Olympic Games of 2022 to a city that has neither mountains nor snow, Beijing -- which will now become the first location to host both a Summer and a Winter Games.

Will Reporters Without Borders need to change the date and re-issue the following image as 2022 approaches, or will China be a freer nation by then?

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

When I signed up for mine, I was participant 50 of 50 at that location and many of my other local meetings were already full. As of 10:10am EDT this morning there are already 98,975 RSVPs to these historic meetings around the country.~~~~~~~~~~~~UPDATE: At noon the RSVP counter was refreshed to show 100,196 RSVPs.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

"I wouldn't just call the Hell's Angels in Oakland the only violent part of our society. I think Lyndon Johnson is, you know, would be a good Hell's Angel. The Angels reflect not only the lower segments of the society, but the higher and, you know, where violence takes a much more sophisticated and respectable form." --Hunter S. Thompson, 1967

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

On the drive home tonight, I had the pleasure of listening to Episode 621 of Marc Maron's WTF podcast, featuring Sir Ian McKellen. Listen to this fascinating conversation yourself, but I want to skip ahead to the little-known Shakespearean monologue with which Sir Ian ends the hour. Here it is again in video form from a few years ago:

Yes, everything that you or I or anyone else can think of has already been written by William Shakespeare; it's simply a fact with which we need to live (and for which we need to be thankful).

Here is a slightly longer version of the words that William Shakespeare put into Sir Thomas More's mouth in defense of an earlier generation of unwanted immigrants (text via PlayShakespeare.com)

Saturday, July 11, 2015

Why doesn't every American student know that our government sentenced Debs to TEN YEARS in prison for delivering this bit of wisdom about war and peace and class struggle in Canton, Ohio in 1918, and that his sentence was upheld by a unanimous Supreme Court?

Here's the short speech being read by Mark Ruffalo to an audience thinking about the Iraq War in 2007:

And here's an excerpt in print of the section beginning at the 1'30" mark of the video:

"Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords ... concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and their wealth they declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war. The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another’s throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And what is war in a nutshell? The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose—especially their lives. They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people. ... The working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish their corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. Yours not to reason why; yours but to do and die. That is their motto and we object on the part of the awakening workers of this nation. If war is right let it be declared by the people."

Friday, July 03, 2015

I expected that the supporters of Bernie Sanders might make a good showing when I put up my first 2016 Presidential Poll in the sidebar, but I wasn't expecting him to open up a quick 80% gap over Hillary Clinton.

Does anyone see any excitement for the "inevitable" establishment candidate for the 2016 Democratic nomination?

(NOTE: If you're looking at trueblueliberal.org on a mobile device, you'll need to scroll down and click on "View Web Version" if you want to see and vote in the sidebar poll.)

About Me

According to the results of free non-scientific online tests, TBL found that he was "Existentialist", "Communist", and "A Grammar God," i.e., if he were a short wall-eyed Frenchman rather than a 6'3" blond American, he would be constantly mistaken for Jean-Paul Sartre!